


midnight thoughts

by jessenigma



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Spoilers for S01E16, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10004516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessenigma/pseuds/jessenigma
Summary: Sometimes Lucy wonders if she really likes history at all.(How can you know who you are when nothing is what you thought it was?)





	

Sometimes Lucy wonders if she really likes history at all.  
  
These are midnight thoughts, things that keep her awake at night since she started this impossible task, staring at the glowing numbers of her alarm clock as they tick by. In the bright light of day, when the team has a mission, when they know Rittenhouse has managed to jump to the past again, and she gets to dig through all that historical knowledge stuffed in her memory for whatever possible reason could send a time traveler to 1967 Tokyo, the thoughts fade away.  
  
(She's too busy then thinking about how her specialty is American political movements, not Japan, and how it's a bit ridiculous to think she knows _everywhere_.)  
  
In the bright light of day, Lucy knows that no one could have tricked her into finishing a PhD she didn't really want. No one could have forced her to spend years digging through dusty archives, squinting at barely legible handwriting on records that not even her closest classmates find as interesting as she does. No one could have sent her into her viva sick with nerves but eager to prove her work. It's definitely true that no one could have pushed her into the oh so glamorous life of an early career academic, struggling to cobble together enough teaching work to pay the bills until she could get a shot at a permanent gig. Working so hard for tenure in the department her mother built. Even that insane decision to let herself be strapped into an impossible machine because she was too curious to let the opportunity to see in reality what she only knew as facts go past. These are her decisions. Mostly.  
  
(Her regret at turning down that dream small college job because of her mother never really fades as night turns into day.)  
  
But hearing the word Rittenhouse come out of her mother's mouth made everything Lucy thought was true about herself turn to quicksand beneath her feet. Losing Amy was devastating, but it was fixable - go back in time, play matchmaker, and the universe would surely find a way to bring her sister back to her. But how do you fix the foundation of your own life when you didn't even know it could be broken by something besides time? And that, more than anything, is what keeps Lucy awake at night.  
  
(An absent biological father with connections is one thing. A present mother waiting for the right moment to reveal secrets is another. One is ignorable, overlookable. One is inescapable.)  
  
Had Lucy even earned her teaching position? Had Rittenhouse been pulling strings all this time to make sure they had a historian, however junior and untenured, situated in just the right place? Did her mother give her all those history books as a child because Lucy was already interested in following her footsteps or did she do it because she wanted to _make_ Lucy interested? Was she crafted and molded into being the sort of person who wanted to learn and teach and know the past?  
  
(Was Lucy really Lucy or was she just another Rittenhouse creation?)  
  
Sometimes Lucy wonders if she really likes history at all. And she knows every time she steps back into the Lifeboat that it doesn't really matter. Because every time she meets someone new in the past, another Harry Houdini or another Josephine Baker, she realizes a little more that she likes helping keep people safe. And there's nothing Rittenhouse could do now to stop her from trying to do just that.  
  
(And she knows more than enough history to help.)


End file.
